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I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome long before it became the mental health disorder du jour, overused by parents to describe their bratty kids so that people think they’re super-geniuses instead of simply antisocial.
Quote: Bungee off the Sears Tower
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Jacob looks like a totally normal young man. He’s clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.
Panic attacks do not have to be ‘reasonable’
Vocabulary: stimming
Sentence: I glance around the store, mentally calculating whether it would cause more of a scene to try to get Jacob out of here before the stimming turns into a full-blown breakdown or whether I can talk him through this.
Page: 8
Word: stim
Definition:
- to self-stimulate;
- (specifically) among autistic people, to fixate on a comforting or compelling thing or action (such as rocking or humming);
Stim, stims or stimming is short for “self stimulation”. Almost everyone does it(tapping feet, cracking knuckles, twiddling thumbs), but in autistic people these behaviors are more pronounced and may seem downright strange. Autistic people often engage in stimming when they are stressed, to self regulate and sometimes to express emotion.
Common autistic stims are: rocking back and forth, headbanging(not the music kind), finger flicking/rippling, spinning, humming, repeating words or sounds and complex body contortions.
Source: [Urban Dictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=stimming)